Pogue’s Basics: Money - The Amazon card

As a store, Amazon.com realizes that it’s at a huge disadvantage: It has no huge chain of physical stores for you to browse. You have to buy everything by mail order, sight unseen.

Yet Amazon dearly wants you to think of them every time you need anything. So it’s willing to give you some really unusual perks.

My favorite is the Amazon Prime Store Card. It’s Amazon’s own “credit card,” which works only for Amazon.com purchases. It gives you 5 percent cash back on everything, every time. If you shop on Amazon, it’s like free money.

It’s available to anyone who’s already an Amazon Prime customer. It’s not a physical card — just a number. You choose that payment method at checkout, and boom: 5% back.

Of course, this amazing deal is amazing only if you religiously pay off the entire bill every month. If you don’t, you’ll be slapped with a nose-bleedy 26 percent interest rate. You’ll rue the day you signed up, and you’ll hate me for making this video.